I’m delighted to let you know that today we have reached an important milestone in our efforts to rebalance the Guardian’s business model to offset the dramatic decline in advertising: the Guardian now has the financial support of more than 200,000 members. In addition, we have 185,000 subscribers and people are buying the paper on newsstands more regularly than we expected. After responding to lots of feedback from readers suggesting they would be happy to give money to support the Guardian’s journalism, we have also now received more than 160,000 one-off contributions from around the world.

We greatly appreciate the role you all play in the Guardian. Thank you. Whether by joining as a member, taking out a print or digital subscription, buying the paper or giving a one-off contribution, you are providing crucial financial support for our independent journalism, and showing how much you value the Guardian’s fair and factual reporting, informed by our progressive and liberal values. This feels more important now than ever.

For while the business model for journalism is in crisis, so are the values to which the Guardian is committed: tolerance, equality and a belief in people’s ability to change the world for the better. In standing with us behind these beliefs, our readers mean so much more to us than just money.

I trust the Guardian to expose the truth when others won’t

Christine Hopkins, Guardian member

As a mark of your impact, I wanted to remind you of some of the journalism your support has helped us produce in the past few months.

The disturbing and unsettling new politics in the US has resulted in some intensive news reporting, but it’s important to step back and look at the bigger picture, such as in Ed Pilkington’s report from Michigan, in which he discovered that voters who rarely read the news thought Trump had had a great first week. Similarly, I found Thomas Frank’s visit to Trump-voting counties in Missouri to be fresh and interesting. We continue with that work in a major new reporting series, The Promise, which asks the provocative question: can Trump really make America great again?

Trump’s election marks a perilous moment for the environment, and in January all of our teams around the world worked together to produce a 24-hour climate live blog to highlight the impact of climate change, and to demonstrate how seriously the Guardian takes the subject. We followed this with a powerful series on air pollution around the world. Trump’s election has also inspired many of our commentators to write powerfully in response — from George Monbiot, whose piece at the end of November, Frightened by Donald Trump? You don’t know the half of it was incredibly popular with readers, to Pankaj Mishra, who took a broad and deep perspective in his long read Welcome to the Age of Anger.

As you may know, the Guardian was among those news organisations banned from a press briefing at the White House in February. That only makes us redouble our efforts to hold President Trump to account.

The other huge story for the Guardian at the moment is, of course, Britain’s historic vote to leave the European Union. Our new Brexit team, working with our world-class correspondents in parliament and across Europe, has made an immediate impact with a string of exclusives, many of them highlighting the human cost. Our Brexit dashboard, in which we return to key indicators every month to measure the economic consequences of the referendum, makes for fascinating reading. Stephen Hawking’s post-Brexit piece, This is the most dangerous time for our planet, was powerful, and it’s been great to have European writers having their say in the Guardian too. Our new series, The New Arrivals, documents the lives of refugees as they settle across Europe — it’s a 500-day project and is already producing moving reporting of human stories. John Harris and John Domokos’s video series, Anywhere But Westminster, tells the story of an alienated and polarised Britain — don’t miss their film about Stoke.

I rely on the Guardian like I rely on friends and family; it gives me hope and it enlightens me

Marianne Charles, Guardian member

We’ve continued to build upon our award-winning undercover work which exposed appalling employment practices at the British retailer Sports Direct with a series of investigative pieces exposing how workers in the gig economy are being exploited: at Le Gavroche, Hermes, DPD and Parcelforce. Our reporting has forced a government inquiry.

And I’m sure you’ve followed Daniel Taylor’s painstaking and sensitive reporting which exposed child sex abuse in British football. Beginning with a devastating interview with former player Andy Woodward, the scale of the scandal we unearthed continues to grow — more than 500 potential victims have come forward, and 184 suspects have been identified in an operation that now involves 20 police forces. This was powerful, society-changing journalism at its best.

By April 2019, we hope to be supported by the equivalent of 1 million members, who will help secure the Guardian’s future in a tough commercial environment. Advertising conditions remain highly treacherous, with advertising in the Guardian — which helps pay for our journalism — down £11m this year. For every new advertising dollar spent in the US, 99 cents is now taken up by Facebook and Google.

More people are reading the Guardian than ever – and it feels important that our independent, investigative, public-interest journalism is read as widely as possible – but fewer are paying for it. So thank you for supporting our journalism. Please tell your family and friends.